From rural communities to busy city streets, New York State is vast and diverse. But all its communities share a similar reliance on the state’s interconnected trucking industry — nearly 90% of communities in New York depend exclusively on trucks to move their goods.

Meeting the needs of the entire Empire State, keeping goods flowing and shelves stocked, requires a deeply complex and nuanced transportation and logistics network with commercial vehicles ranging from light-duty to heavy-duty, each serving different roles based on operational demands.

This diversity is something which lawmakers in Albany failed to recognize when they implemented a one-size-fits-all approach to their electrification goals, originally written by legislators in California, to regulate the industry with the 2021 Advanced Clean Trucks, or ACT, rule.

On its surface, ACT establishes a noble goal to electrify the trucking industry by requiring a minimum percentage of trucks sold to consist of zero emission vehicles, or ZEVs. Since the rule’s implementation at the start of........

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